Monday’s Mythology

Mr. Clay Barham presents this following statement (Only Two Revolutions) as foundation for his personal mythology and opinions as “Christian” and “Libertarian in the Jeffersonian sense” of modern governance.

“Revolution implies changing how we live and are governed. There have been only two successful revolutions in our world. It is not the American, French or Russian, or any political conquest. The first was the birth, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. 1600 years later, followers of Jesus established a New World in America where His teachings gained traction. People accepted the few ruling the many, until these two revolutions. Jesus taught only individuals were responsible for their own thoughts and deeds, and removed escape from God into the cover of community as an option. Redemption is only for individuals. Rulers see individual freedom to pursue legitimate self-interest a threat to community interests, as defined by them. Socialists, liberals, Muslims and Democrats condemn America and all who advocate individual self-interest. It undermines their ideas that a few wise elite should rule the many. It explains their anti-Christian bias as well.”

This individualist-theocratic view, complete with the arrogance expressed from this Dominionist position, is apparent within the reality of Word History as Mr. Clay Barham regurgitates his personal understanding, personal mythology, with bias and zeal of the newly converted. Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islamism, the cultural shifts from hunter-gathering cultures to “civilized city states” the Socratic revolution, The rise and fall of the Roman Empire the Renaissance, the industrial revolution are all of no value within Mr. Barham’s zealous assertions. They, however, work to dispel the assertions of Mr. Barham’s opinion of “only two revolutions” and help to enlighten as to how these assertions are not completely accurate as applied to the theology of Christianity or the United States and inextricably to Western European Culture. This false assertion serves only to support the allegations of Mr. Barham within his rather shaky Dominionist Christian assertion of “revolution” as strongly individualistic and only possible on an individual basis. “You must be born-again” is the clear message as if he has already taken up residence in the C-Street house in Washington, DC.

My assertion is that there are billions of revolutions as each human consciousness grasps the shamanic reality of a personally known God or lack thereof and both maintain validity within revolution. This notion that it is the concept of Christianity that has created the democratic rule and success of America and Americans denies the very central concept of individuality and becomes totally dependent upon conformity with the community, the Christian mob mentality. Individual redemption, individual responsibility and the independent and individualistic action of the American Citizen are negated with this Christian Dominionist world view as expressed by Mr. Barham. The assertion that the Cults of Jesus with their Geneva Bible created the most successful free economy and society is pure Christian Bigotry in openly denying the contributions of the hundreds of other cultures and millions of individuals who contributed but do not share this community theology. America is not “a Christian” nation but a nation of religious freedom to which Mr. Barham speaks with contempt of the diversity that created this great nation.

The structure and hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the foundation of Christianity, is very much a monarchy with the infallible Pope’s edicts dispersed through the Cardinals, Bishops and Priesthood to the congregations. Provided the clear world view of Mr. Clay Barham the Catholic Church is therefore relegated to “Socialists, liberals, Muslims and Democrats” categorization of his sweeping view. It would therefore be accurate to define the Catholic Church as anti-christian according to Mr. Barham. An interesting position, to say the least, considering the Christian Churches are all loosely structured similarly to the Catholic.

On the North American continent, when Western European Christians invaded, lived the Haudenosaunee people who were highly civilized, organized into a functioning political structure (the League of 6 Nations) upon which modern American governance is loosely structured. The indigenous peoples negotiated treaties, trade agreements, defined loose boundaries for territorial claim and held congressional meetings to conduct the business that directly effected all tribes in peaceful discourse in a largely democratic process of the Longhouse. A successful form of individual governance based on the family, the tribe and the nation but worthy of destruction by the Christian Dominionists who later adopted similar governing philosophies.

The Western European invasion delivered plagues, genocide and war, stealing Native American lands and destroying their culture; all from the mythology of that “Christian Dominionist Western European Society” that they carried with them was and is somehow morally superior or divinely directed as more worthy than the native culture, religions and individual lives. The people of the Iroquois, The Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca later joined by the Tuscarora were virtually wiped out of existence in these actions of Christian ignorance and arrogance within their society and this fact clearly defines the social and moral impetus of the Christian tradition within the United States as we know it today. Consider yourself American Aboriginal whenever you hear a Christian Dominionist speak because the end result of Christian Authority is annihilation of anything substantially differing from their narrow, bigoted and petty world view. There is no celebration of the individual within the Christian tradition. There is only the Preacher led mob mentality of the congregation, the collective upon which each “church” is built and is dependent upon for funding through the process of tithes, their voluntary tax on prayer.

These Native American peoples were sensitive and highly aware husbands to the lands, to the forests and to the native wildlife with which they found harmony and balanced living as an integral portion of the total ecology. Controlled burns to create pasture, agriculture within the ecology and non-invasive and non-permanent development all benchmarked the harmonious-with-the-natural- world-methods of livelihood that these indigenous humans enjoyed for millenium prior to the Western European Christian Dominionist invasion. Land ownership was a foreign concept because how could anyone own what was created for all peoples and all life by the divine?

The Western European brought to this new land the beasts and agriculture that he was familiar with in cows, goats, pigs, barnyard fowl, the crucifers and root crops of Western European subsistence farming. Western Europeans brought with them the contempt of nature inherent with Dominionist Christian Philosophy and ultimately held these successful native peoples in contempt with the righteous indignation that is only born of Christian arrogance of Dominion. There is no respect of or harmony within the natural world systems for the Western European or Christian Dominionist with his “divine direction” to rule over all.

The Iroquois, the tribe that I’m most familiar, did not hold the sexist ideology of the Western European who “owned” his wife as chattel. The distinctions between humans, in the eyes of the aboriginal, were foundations for celebration not castigation in that all peoples, all life, is equal in the eyes of the creator. Recognition of the full spectrum of human sexuality was fully accepted and this flew in the face of the repressed Christian providing the impetus for the destruction of anything, any human with a difference that is at the very foundation of Western European and Christian Dominionist mind-sets. There is no harmony with nature or within self as a direct result of “original sin” in the finest Calvinist tradition and no reward exists save in the great beyond. This then is the second of the revolutions that Mr. Clay Barham espouses in his born-again glory and in- the-moment mythology.